Middle English Syntax and Lexicon

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Transcript of Middle English Syntax and Lexicon

The Lexicon of Middle English Origins of Middle English Vocabulary Inherited from Old English Derived Borrowed Compounding

Affixation 3 reasons for hospitality towards loanwords: Large-scale contact between English-speakers and users of other languages

Latin renaissance of the twelfth century led to widespread use of Latin for documentary purposes

ME is a less inflected language--easier to adapt words from foreign languages The Syntax of Middle English Latin/French Influence Why did it change? A Period Characterized by Variation Weakening of Stresses Loss of Inflection Viking Age raids, settlements, conquests, and political take-overs The Ormulum

Well over a hundred words of either certain or likely Scandinavian origin to anger, to bait, bloom, boon, booth, bull, to die, to flit, ill, law, low, meek, to raise, root, to scare, skill, skin, to take, though, to thrive, wand, to want, wing, wrong. The number of words borrowed from French and/or Latin outstrips the number of words surviving from Old English by quite a margin Welcome to the World of Middle English Conclusion Works Cited We can often tell that a word has come from French rather than Latin.

Ex: peace from French pais, not from Latin pac-

Much more difficult to be certain that a ME word is solely from Latin

Why? ...because French borrowed extensively from Latin Words which have no cognate in the other Indo-European languages

OR

Whose cognates have not survived in other languages

Ex: drincan DRINK / French 'boire' The majority of later Old English texts are...

written in a fairly uniform type of literary language

based on the West Saxon dialect What Happened?? The political and cultural upheavals of the Norman Conquest completely changed this situation Need for improvisation Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English records around 500 different spellings for THROUGH. Scandinavian Influence Chronological Boundaries: 1150-1500

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the roote,And bathed euery veynein swich licourOf which vertu engendred is the our;Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breethInspired hath in euery holt and heethThe tendre croppes, and the yonge sonneHath in the Ram his halue cours yronne,And smale foweles maken melodye,That slepen al the nyght with open ye(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimagesAnd palmeres for to seken straunge strondes … Many of the Old English suffixes and prefixes gradually lost their productivity because of the huge influx of French words and word-building elements.

Many suffixes became absolutely unproductive, others like -dom, -hood, -ness, -ship gave a number of new derivations like: dukedom, hardship, braveness Word Order "A construction employing function words in place of inflectional endings to express grammatical meaning, as in the use of the of-genitive (of the dog) instead of the 's genitive (the dog's)" (Brinton 575). Nouns Prepositions Verbs Auxiliaries Examples [b]e fadir seide to hise seruauntis delit of synne Ther is no thing hid, that schal not be maad opyn lest perauenture it wole passe the termes to se the Lord And he was rooth, and wolde not come in to-dative case: of-genitive case: Passive tense: Future Tense: Progressive Tense: (Brinton 300-301) Unstressed vowels a, o, u were reduced to the [e] sound in most words. The e sound was lost at the end of words, as well as its weakening in the middle of words. whanne > whan, [b]anne > than Quiz Time!!!

http://www.quizrevolution.com/ch/a99175/go/middle_english_history m[ae]gester > maister "An affix expressing the grammatical categories of a word, such as case (nouns) or tense (verbs)" (Brinton 571) (Brinton 283) Only 2 endings left for noun case, -s and -es Adjective and articles reduced so much as to lose gender differentiation Verbs Verb Inflection th > s ending change loss of infinitive endings Split in present participle endings North: -andSouthwest: -indeMiddle: -ande/-endeNortheast: -inge (Roseborough 59) (Roseborough 58) "Despite the impoverishment of inflection, word order is still very flexible, and gives more options than present day" (Handke). SVO Patterns were most popular, and became more rigidly used towards the end of the period (late 15th century) (Handke) VSO pattern was the rule for ME Interrogative clauses: Why make ye yourself for to the lyk a fool? (Brinton 304) Also used OSV, VOS and OVS (but these became increasingly rare) *Fun Fact: VS patterns were popular in poetry to help with rhyming (Hendke) Adverbs such as "Thanne" would invert the sentence to VSO Thanne bigan dame Prudence (Brinton 303) Noun-Adjective and Adjective-Noun still commonly used. "Middle-English History on QuizRevolution." Quizrevolution.com. Quiz Revolution, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. BIG PICTURE Highly Inflected Language Analytic Language